Compaq Alpha makes 1GHz target

With days to spare

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Our old mate Terry Shannon, who runs insider newsletter Shannon knows Compaq, reports in the latest edition that Compaq sent first pass release samples of EV7 Alphas running at 1GHz to manufacture just before the end of last year.

Shannon also reports that Compaq is now testing Alphas at speeds of 1.2GHz and above, but suggests that EV68 platforms running at speeds like this are unlikely to see the light of day until the end of the year.

At the same time, he says in his newsletter that IBM, which as we reported here some time ago, was to fab Alphas using its "copper whopper" interconnect technology, has succeeded in producing the beasts, and that he actually had an IBM-fabbed 1GHz EV68 chip for some seminars he conducted at the end of last year.

In other news, Shannon reports that Compaq is also testing its "Marvel" Wildfire platform, which scales up to 256 processors, in its labs. ®